


Milex in Quarantine

by Tealybob



Category: Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Confinement, F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, One Night Stands, Romance, Slow Build, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23712043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tealybob/pseuds/Tealybob
Summary: After a regrettable one night stand with one another, Alex and Miles are awoken by an alert that the city has gone into lock-down, successfully securing Miles within the confinement of Alex's apartment.
Relationships: Miles Kane/Alex Turner
Comments: 5
Kudos: 82





	Milex in Quarantine

**Author's Note:**

> This in no way is meant to belittle the struggles that many of us are facing during this pandemic. This is my contribution to distract fellow Milex shippers for just a brief couple minutes out of our stressful days. Everyone stay safe out there. <3

1

This was possibly the worst timing Alex had ever encountered in his life. He kept his eyes trained on the television, trying to grasp onto the words that the actors spoke, but it was the equivalent of rereading the same sentence in a book over and over and over and-

“I heard that heat kills viruses. You know…  _ friction _ .” 

Alex breathed deeply. His guest just couldn’t resist talking, could he? “ _ Extreme _ heat,” he responded. “As in one hundred degrees and above, so you can stop that train of thought right now.” 

“Oh, I’m sure we could get to one hundred degrees.” 

Alex dared to turn his head away from the TV to witness Miles’s grin first-hand. The flirt was draped across the lounge chair like a throw blanket. He was wearing one of Alex’s black T-shirts and a pair of baggy pajama bottoms. He acted as if he owned the place now. 

They’d had a great show yesterday. They’d had an even better after-party. There had been drinks and cigarettes and more drinks and mild crossfading towards the end of the night. Perhaps it had indeed been the small intake of weed around midnight that had sent Miles into a fit of sexual advancement. Some close proximity here, a little biting there, a rough push into the wall around the corner, and top it all off with desperate handfuls of hair…

_ Ahem- _

Anyways, Alex had woken up in his own bed to the sound of an emergency alarm sounding from his phone. He had to read the notification three times before his mind wrapped around the information. 

The city had announced an emergency quarantine until further notice. No one was to leave their home unless it was a medical emergency. Which meant that Miles’s flight back to England was...

_ “All flights have been cancelled, my email says. Right. I guess I’ll be making breakfast for us, then. Can you show me where your kitchen is? I didn’t get a proper tour last night, you know. At least, not of your flat...”  _

That was what had led them to where they are now: sitting on opposite sides of the living room watching a new drama series on the first TV channel that hadn’t been broadcasting updates on the outbreak. Miles had made breakfast as promised. They’d shared the last of the orange juice over places of french toast. Alex had to admit, it wasn’t half bad. But this - sitting in silence carrying the weight of their suffocating mistake from hours ago - was absolutely terrible. 

“I’ve never known you to keep up with television shows,” Miles mused. 

“I don’t typically.” 

“Just avoiding talking to me, then? Cheers.” 

Alex licked his lips anxiously. “I don’t think talking about it is going to do us any favors.” 

“We don’t have to talk about  _ it _ ,” he argued. “We could talk about the tour, or make music, or discover new music, or-” 

“I’m a little hungover from last night, actually,” Alex lied. “I think I just want to take it easy.” 

“You don’t get hangovers.” 

“Well, somehow I did.” 

“You’re really that scared to talk to me?”

“It’s not that-” 

“You won’t even look at me.” 

Alex rolled his eyes until they landed on his guest. He raised his eyebrows in an exasperated,  _ There, happy? _

Miles nearly laughed. He ran a hand through the untamed locks of hair falling into his face. “Is it difficult being so childish? It has to be painful at times.”

“You’re a dick.” 

“Like now, is this painful for you?”

“Can you just shut up, Miles-” 

“You’re doing a really good job, though. I want to make sure you know that.” 

“Fucking-” Alex stood up from his seat, throwing a pillow straight for Miles’s head. “I’m making a drink, I can’t deal with you-”

Miles faked a gasp as he clutched his new pillow. “Alex Turner, it’s not even noon!” 

“I don’t care to see noon at this rate.” 

“Whatever will your fans say?” 

“They’re not going to know.” 

“They’re not going to know that you’re drunk at quarter past eleven on a Sunday with your strapping bandmate who you got all hot and sweaty with the night before? I think they’d be rather ecstatic to hear about this.” 

“Can you  _ please _ stop talking?” 

“Oh, I’m just getting started, Allie. Grab me a beer?” 

* * *

  
  


2

Every time Alex blinked, the ceiling came half a foot closer to face. He blinked and blinked, willing the oncoming drywall to cover him like a blanket, but no matter how often he blinked, and the half feet added up to what surely was a mile by now, the ceiling still hadn’t touched him. He scoffed up at the grey surface. “Coward!” 

“What did you call me?” 

“No, the-” His head rolled to the left. His ear pressed painfully into the rough carpet. “The bloody ceiling.” 

Miles was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow. Every so often, Alex felt Miles’s foot brush against his, but he forced himself to not notice. Miles tipped the bottle of schnapps to his lips and nearly finished off the yellow liquor. With a swallow and a satisfied exhale, Miles set the bottle down on Alex’s chest, gripping the neck with all five fingers. “I can’t believe this is the only drink you have in your  _ entire _ flat.” 

“I had more,” Alex frowned. He tried to take the bottle off of his chest, but Miles had the surprising strength pressing it down that only a drunk man could fail to notice. “But you... drank it all….” 

“Well you should’ve had more prepared.” 

“You’re crushing my lungs-” 

“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry!” 

Alex inhaled sharply as his lungs broke free. Miles downed the remaining shot from the bottle and set it on the tv stand behind him. “Today wasn’t so- I’m really sorry, are you alright? Can you breathe?”

Alex laughed and nodded. 

“Today wasn’t so bad!” Miles finished. “Quarantine can keep going, as far ’s I care.”

“We’re out of alcohol now.” 

“ _ Damn _ it  _ all  _ to  _ hell _ .”

Alex’s borrowed shirt, loosened from the day of lounging around the apartment, drooped around Miles’s neck. His collarbone was half way exposed, and Alex noticed a dark spot popping up from beneath the neckline. 

“That a hickey?” he exclaimed. 

Miles tried to look down, but his chin was annoyingly persistent about being in the way. “Probly. You think you’re a vampire.” 

“No I don’t.” 

“You definitely do. Last night you were all…” He swept in and growled as he nuzzled his vicious mockery into Alex's shoulder. Alex’s attempts to elbow him away were less than sufficient. Miles pulled back enough to whisper in the other man’s ear. “It was almost addicting.” 

Alex sat up, pushing off the other man. “Sod off.” 

Miles curled himself into a bundle of laughs while Alex squinted his eyes towards the clock on the wall. Midnight? Half passed two? Why didn’t he have a digital clock hanging anywhere? He pushed his head into his hand and breathed through the spinning he felt in his spine. 

“Do you want me to find a hotel?” 

“What?” 

“I’ve hung around all day because you can’t really kick me out. Quarantine and all. But I can find a hotel, Al. I can call a cab-” 

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to make you pay for a place to sleep for the night.” 

“That’s the thing, though.” 

Miles sat up beside Alex on the floor. The space between the TV and the couch wasn’t big enough for the two of their lanky bodies to be fully extended and rolling around. Their feet would knock into the bottom of the couch if they weren’t careful. Hell, they probably had, Alex realized. 

Miles pressed his bony knee down against Alex’s. “We don’t know when they’re gonna say ‘all clear.’ Could be a few days, y’know.” 

Alex bounced his knee back against Miles. “I’m aware. That’s why I’ve decided that…” 

He turned his head to look Miles in the eye. His bandmate’s face was solemn and open, waiting to hear his fate for the days to come. No wonder Alex had lost himself to desire the previous night. Miles’s eyes were deep and coaxing, like the darkest corner of a movie theater, drawing you in for intimacy and seclusion… 

Fuck, he needed to go to bed.

“I’ve decided that I’ll sleep in the bed, and you can have the couch,” Alex finished. He grinned from ear to ear. “No, really, I insist. Please, Miles, take the couch, it’s no problem. The bed will do just fine for me. Honest.” 

Miles shook his head while a small smile tugged on his lips. “Will it? Will it be okay for you?”

“I promise. I’ve fallen asleep on that bed countless times, you’d be surprised.” 

“I’m the bum looking for a place to crash, it really wouldn’t be an issue for me to sleep on the bed-”

Alex began to push himself to his feet. “ _ Nooo _ , you’re a guest, Miles. You simply  _ must _ take the couch. What kind of host would I be if I made you sleep on the mattress, huh?” 

Alex felt a hand on his back, helping him find his footing. “Easy does it, Al.” 

“There’s blankets- well, you know. You’ve been throwing them around all day.” 

Miles laughed. “I’ll make you breakfast in the morning again, yeah?” 

Alex didn’t respond. His sights were set towards his bedroom. The ceiling threatened to cave in around him with every heavy step he took. 

* * *

  
  


3

“Why don’t you have any CD’s?” 

Alex rubbed a drop of water off of his cheek with the back of his wrist. The butterscotch liquor from the night before had left an impressively stiff residue ring on his wine glasses. He had been scrubbing at the circle of sugar for far too many minutes. Those minutes had left Miles unattended in his living room, which was doing wonders for Alex’s anxiety. 

“Is this a picture of little you? That is so precious-” 

“Please don’t touch things!” Alex called. 

“‘ _ Al and his best mate Wilbert.’ _ ” His voice miraculously climbed to an octave that Miles claimed in the studio he could never, ever reach. “Oh my gawwsh.” 

Alex resisted a chuckle. It had occurred to him the first morning that Miles would eventually take notice to every item that Alex had on display. He’d thought about putting away some of the more personal exhibits, but given their close (and endless) proximity, he hadn’t had the chance. He’d considered sending Miles out for milk or tea just to have a moment to clean up the place. But if a picture of him and his childhood dog, best mate Wilbert, was going to be exposed to anyone, it might as well be his current best mate. 

He did have  _ extremely  _ personal items in the living room, however. In the bottom of the bookcase, between a hard copy of Dr. Jekyll and a standard black binder, there were a couple notebooks that Alex would take out on occasion and write in. One was dedicated to the dark thoughts that even he didn’t want to reread once they’d been put on paper. The other was poetry written very clearly about moments of his life that he wished had gone differently. He had lots of ordinary-topic notebooks lying around the apartment, though, so there was absolutely no reason that Miles should be drawn to those particular two… but this  _ was  _ Miles he was talking about. 

“How many of these books have you actually read, huh?”

“The majority.” 

“I never see you reading.” 

“You’re never here.” 

“I’ve been here for three days now and have yet to see you pick up a book.” 

Alex mumbled some retorts under his breath as he set a glass on the drying rack. Next up: the bacon skillet from that morning. It felt rude doing the dishes while Miles entertained himself. He hadn’t signed up to host someone for three days, no, but this still felt like neglect. Perhaps if Miles was less of a child, it wouldn’t feel quite so urgent that Alex mind his every move… 

“Again, why don’t you have any CDs?”

“CDs are a little outdated, ya know.” 

“As a musician, I’m sure it’s against a contract somewhere for you to make statements like that.” 

Alex considered. That was probably true, actually. “Everyone just uses their phones.” 

“I don’t!”

Alex shook his head with a chuckle. “How surprising.” 

Setting the skillet aside, Alex turned off the water and reached for the nearest hand towel. He glanced at the oven clock, then instantly regretted it. Nearly three o’clock: the dishes had only killed twenty minutes. This apartment was going to drive him crazy. 

“I’m going to vacuum,” he announced, stepping into the living room. 

Miles, open book balanced in hand, looked up with wide eyes. “You vacuumed yesterday,” he argued. 

“And then we rolled around on the floor last night.” 

“Yeah, we did,” Miles grinned. 

“Stop it.” 

“Don’t vacuum. You’ve been doing chores all day.” Miles placed the book back on the shelf. “Can’t we do something together? We could play cards or something.”

“Cards?”

“Or chess? I saw a chess set.” 

“You don’t know how to play chess.” 

“That’s only partly true. How about a jam sesh? I saw your guitar under-” 

“Stop snooping around my flat.” 

“That is literally the only thing you have given me to do.” 

“Do you want to vacuum?”

Miles growled and lifted his foot slightly. Alex smirked, anticipating the stomp, but Miles seemed to catch himself. His foot gently returned to the floor. “Alex,” he said, the name dripping in a condescending glaze. 

“Yes, Miles?”

“You’ve known me for a very long time,” he said slowly. “So I’m sure you can imagine how stir crazy I’m going.” 

“Oh, absolutely,” Alex nodded along. 

“I’m going to wipe that smug look off your face.” 

Alex cracked, rubbing his forehead to try and hide his smile. He walked around Miles, receiving a knee to the back of the thigh for retaliation. He pulled open the closet door and reached in. 

“Fine,” Miles grumbled. “Vacuum your damn carpet. I’ll be over here banging my head on the wall. Won’t I, little Wilbert?” 

“Don’t talk to Wilbert.” 

“You have a copy of Jekyll and Hyde?”

The vacuum fell with a thud as Alex lost his grip on it.  _ How did I fucking know he would target that shelf? _ He quickly shut the closet door, turning towards the ticking bomb. “Alright, yeah,” he announced all too loudly. “Let’s do a jam session. Couldn’t hurt, I guess.” 

Miles’s fingers froze on the spine of the book. His eyebrows were high. 

Alex’s hand was tight on the door handle. He’d reacted too sharply, and he knew that. His only option now was to play the sudden tension like it was intentional. Miles stared at him steadily, so he forced a casual shrug, propping his other hand on his hip. Just two guys standing around a living room, making abrupt decisions, having sudden mood swings… 

It wasn’t convincing. Miles narrowed his eyes at Alex. His fingers flicked up off of the corner with purpose. “What’s wrong with the book?”

An easy shrug. “There’s nothing wrong with the book.” 

Yet another poor performance from Turner. He cursed himself in his head. Miles gave the stillness in the room a few more seconds to burn Alex’s skin, then looked back down to the shelf. “Alright,” he mused. “I’ll leave it be. For now. I’ll get the guitar. You find some pots and pans to drum on.” 

Alex held his breath while Miles made his way into the bedroom. This quarantine was only going to get trickier from here. All it would take is Alex dozing off while watching TV, or Miles sneaking off in the middle of the night to do some investigative snooping around that particular shelf. He tried not to think about what was written in the notebooks; there was no use reminding himself exactly what Miles was bound to discover sooner or later…

* * *

  
  


4

Day four with no updates from the city about the status of the lockdown. According to news articles online, the quarantine was helping matters, but there was no guarantee that the amount of time the quarantine had been in place was enough to stop the problem altogether - just... delay it four days. Alex read every article he could find, listening to the TV in the background. 

His manager had called earlier that morning and informed him they were receiving notifications of pending doom from venues and arenas. Most places were sure that their doors would be closed to the public for weeks to come - possibly months. That meant their tours were being cancelled, “left and right,” as his manager had put it. 

Alex hung up, and Miles’s phone promptly rang.  _ “You have to take it. They can’t know you’re bunked up with me.” _

Miles had processed and accepted the news better than Alex did. With a loose shrug, Miles was able to begin thinking about additional songs they could add to the tour, “...to make it up to the fans for cancelling and rescheduling.” He proposed new releases, an official cover of another Bowie song, or possibly a guest artist. All the while, Alex felt his focal awareness shrink like a deflating bubble all around him, until he couldn’t focus on anything past the ringing in his ears and the invisible weight pinning his arms to his side. That was when his phone had found itself superglued to his hand. This had started about an hour ago, yet he continued to read still. 

Miles paced from the kitchen to the living room, mindlessly strumming away at Alex’s guitar. Alex was vaguely aware of Miles speaking every so often, but he couldn’t tell you what words were said to him. This was the amount of focus he put into fine-tuning his songs in the studio, and luckily Miles was accustomed to it. 

Alex ran a hand through his tangled hair. “‘ _ Citizens can prepare to be stationed in their homes for the next thirty days,’”  _ he read from one website. “ _ ‘Officials have not released any statements disclosing the time in which they estimate the virus will run its toll-’” _

His phone was ripped from his hands before he could finish the sentence. Miles stood beside the couch, guitar hanging from his hand. He tossed the phone onto the chair behind him. “You need to stop reading articles. You’ve been at it for far too long-” 

“We need to stay aware of what’s going on,” Alex barked. 

“And you made yourself aware forty minutes ago. Now you’re just stressing.” 

“I think I have a right to, actually.” 

Alex rose and made to grab his phone, but Miles remained in his way, arm stretched out as a barrier. “Alex, you’re going to lose yourself if you don’t stop.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Your mind tends to take over your body. I’ve seen you shut down before for annoyingly long periods of time.”

Alex huffed an argument under his breath and tried to sidestep his bandmate. Miles’s arm became a bar of steel, catching Alex around the waist and keeping him in place, away from the chair. Alex pushed an elbow slightly into the body against his, but it only made Miles hold him harder. 

“Alex-”

Alex reluctantly stopped fighting long enough to lock eyes with Miles, who was closer than he realized. There was a darkness to Miles’s gaze, and Alex found himself looking down just to recover his breath from it. Miles’s arm was stretched across his abdomen, hand gripped around to the back. Alex’s hand was wrapped around his wrist, frozen in the middle of trying to remove the restraint. Now Alex noted the muscle that flexed under the pad of his thumb. He could smell his favorite aloe body wash lingering on Miles’s skin. The scent was his, but now it mingled with a tinge of… well,  _ Miles. _

“Are you done?” Miles asked with a rough edge. Alex felt the words more than he heard them. He brought his eyes back up. The face above his was a mere two inches away. Miles had given up shaving the day before, and up close, Alex could see how quickly the scruff was going to come in. He felt his hand fill with helium, longing to rise and touch the rough cheek of-

Alex clenched his jaw.  _ Snap out of it. _ “Let me have my phone.” 

Miles gave the slightest shake of his head. 

“Do I need to force it from you?” Alex teased, a small grin splitting his face. 

A smirk tugged at the corner of Miles’s lips at the insinuation of a grabble, but the arm straightened against Alex’s body softened. The wrist under Alex’s fingers relaxed, weighing down heavier against his hips. Miles’s fingers, however, tightened slightly. Alex found his body being coaxed closer to the man in front of him. For a brief moment, he almost let Miles’s hands have their way with him. 

But only for a moment. Alex pulled backwards, taking a step out of the ring of heat encircling them. This sanctuary was evolving into Alex’s own personal cage of turmoil and bad decisions. 

He let go of Miles’s wrist, expecting Miles to surrender as well. Miles had other plans, it seemed. 

Abandoning the guitar beside the couch, Miles stepped forward back into Alex’s personal space. His hair grazed the side of Alex’s temple as Alex’s hands lifted to press against his chest. Another step backwards by Alex was followed by another step forwards from Miles. Then another set. And there was the wall forcing Alex to a stop. 

The aloe was a tonic, it would seem. 

“What are we doing?” Alex breathed. 

Miles’s hooded eyes flashed. He grinned. “Helping you not shut down.” 

His hand caught Alex’s, pulling it up around his neck, just at the nape. Thick hair tickled Alex’s fingers, and a heavy breath blew over his cheeks. 

“I’m going to the store.” 

The abrupt sentence caused both men to pause. Miles pulled back slightly to clearly look at Alex’s face. Alex licked his lips and quickly dropped his hands to his side. Miles mirrored, but slower. His eyes narrowed. His tongue pressed on the inside of his cheek. “You’re going to go out,” he repeated. “After everything you just read on all of those websites?”

Alex forced a breath into his body, cooling his nerves. “I’d rather go outside than get into a fight with you.” 

“Is that what we were about to do? Fight?”

“I don’t know what we were about to do.” 

“Think you do.” 

Alex stepped away from the wall, swiveling his shoulders to avoid Miles’s. He grabbed his coat from the closet and jammed his fists into the sleeves. “I’ll be back in an hour.” 

“Are you serious right now?”

“You’ve eaten all of my food.” 

“Alex, if I took it too far, I’m sorry. I really am. I thought I was picking up on-”

“Yeah, no, I understand,” Alex responded quickly, grabbing his keys off the table by the door. “Don’t worry about it. It was both of us and it’s fine, I just remembered that we don’t have food for tonight so I’m going to go get it now - I’m thinking maybe pasta or I can try to do some kind of Thai dish but I don’t know how well it’ll turn out - and I could use the air anyways, so don’t worry about it, really-” 

“Alex.” 

“Hm?” Alex turned back, one foot in the hallway already. 

Miles was holding out the cell phone. Alex reached to take it. “Please be careful.” 

“Yeah,” Alex nodded, and closed the door behind him. 

* * *

  
  


5

Years ago, when Alex and Miles had finished their first tour, Alex had written a poem about the two of them together in his apartment. He wrote about what it would be like to spend just a day together, alone, for the first time since their album began. He imagined them sitting with coffee at the same side of the dinner table, bumping elbows and smiling over their mugs. Coffee shared with no one else. There were no managers or bandmates. No fans, no paparazzi, no bus driver, no room service, no anything. Just two friends, alone in a small nook unbeknownst to the rest of the world. 

The poem drew countless parallels: the spacious hotels they stayed in compared to the small living space that Alex preferred to dwell in; the dark nights hitting the cities and the bright light streaming in through his large windows; the loudness of their music on stage and the soft ticking of a clock on the wall; the busy schedule versus the timeless capsule that the couch provided. In his poem, the scenario was strategically thought out. Every aspect of their time in the apartment could be connected beautifully to a hidden foreshadow somewhere in their past. 

Alex thought about that notebook now, about how it sat at the bottom of the bookshelf just a mere five steps away. He wanted to read it now. He wanted to remind himself of what he had longed so much for. He was desperate to see why it had all sorted itself out so well in the poem when the reality was nothing short of awkward. He liked to think he was decent at writing reality - staying true to the hardening aspects of life and the unavoidable discomfort. But this… he really hadn’t accurately predicted how this scenario would unfold at all. 

“Are you going to write anything or are you just gonna keep staring at me?”

They sat beside one another now, not at the dinner table with coffee, but on the sofa with beer in hand. The clock ticked, and it should have been peaceful, but the underlying silence was an out-of-tune guitar playing the same chord again and again. Miles was reading a green book from the top shelf. Alex wasn’t even sure which book it was. A blank notebook sat open in Alex’s lap. He had intended to write some lyric ideas down, but stopped when it dawned on him that Miles would see every raw seed from his mind before he had a chance to create a second draft. His brain was overflowing with phrases about a certain one night stand he had had earlier that week (and who still remained lingering in his house, drinking his beer), so first drafts were out of the question. 

Alex set the notebook down on the ground and took a swig from his bottle. “Nothing’s coming to mind.” 

“Need inspiration? I’d be happy to model nude for you.” 

“How is that going to help with writing?”

“I’m sure some great adjectives would come to mind.”

“You’d like to think so.” Another drink. Alex rested his head back against the cushions. 

A nude Miles modeling? Asked a week ago, the answer would have been yes, pretty please. 

A week ago, the desire for Miles was still a fueling agent behind Alex’s creativity. He had some songs on the back burner of his mind that were written specifically about the cocky git. This should have been an ideal situation - having Miles confined to his living room. But this was forced. This wasn’t optional. This wasn’t them spending an evening together because they simply couldn’t get enough. This was all supposed to come organically, at a pace Alex could adapt with and adjust as he wanted. This was all a first draft that was being finalized before he could get his hands on it. 

“What are you thinking so hard about?” 

Alex looked over. Miles had the book closed around his index finger. He observed Alex with a lift in the outer corner of his eyes. That right there… That look: those dark brown eyes locked into one place with the focus and intensity that even a car crash couldn’t deter. That was the look that fueled Alex’s poems. He felt the fuel now as it bled into his veins. 

He closed his eyes to still the surge in his body as he prepared to speak. This would be easier without making eye contact. 

“The other night...” he began. 

“Oh,” Miles practically sang. “You finally want to talk about that, do you?”

“How long have you wanted… have you been interested in…”

“How long have I been interested in sleeping with you and then getting stuck in a nation-wide quarantine that prevents either of us from leaving for the inevitable future? I’ve been thinking about proposing it for a few weeks now, I suppose.” 

“Never mind,” Alex grumbled. 

A hand clapped against Alex’s chest. “I’m only playing.” 

“I don’t care anymore.” 

“Yes, you do.” 

“Not enough to put up with you.” 

“You want to know how long I’ve been trying to shag you.”

Alex didn’t answer. That wasn’t his question, he didn’t think. He felt movement and opened one eye to watch Miles settle himself further into the corner of the couch. His eyes closed again. 

“I guess I’ve wanted to shag you since we met, quite honestly.” 

“What?” Genuine surprise, Alex found. His own interest certainly hadn’t sprouted within the first year. Had he really been so oblivious? 

“Have you looked in a mirror? And back then you were just so adorable, you know?” 

“So this has been a dream of yours since we met, has it?”

“Well, no. I didn’t actively try to sleep with you. I just noticed, ‘Wow, he’s something else to look at,’ and that was that.” 

Alex finished his drink and let the bottle dangle between his fingers off the arm of the couch. A distinct sour taste formed on his tongue. He swallowed, and it seeped through his throat into his lungs. Since they had met, Miles had been interested in bedding him. That meant that there was no matching poem for Alex. There was no preparing for the day they would finally fall into one another’s arms. There was nothing behind their stage performances of teasing and pawing. It was just lust, theatrics, and a shaggable co-frontman. 

Alex needed to burn that notebook before Miles stumbled upon it. 

“I suppose it was a couple years later that I actually wanted to…” Miles trailed off. 

“To actually fuck me?”

“No,” Miles countered. “That I found myself wanting to kiss you. And I don’t mean in the throws of desperation after we’ve been drinking all night - though I’m sorry that’s how that played out.” Alex opened his eyes to look over. Miles directed his words at the closed book in his hands. “I mean… just, backstage. Or on the tour bus. Or when we’d have a cigarette before a show. I thought so many times that if I ever did kiss you right before a show, we would perform that entire night with an  _ unbelievable _ high. At least, I would. I would have been giddy as a fucking pony.” 

“You never did, though,” Alex said quietly. 

“Nope.” Miles reached for his own beer. “I always worried that it would go poorly and it would ruin the show, so I stopped myself. And then after the first tour ended, we went our separate ways. But I was utterly unprepared for how much I would find myself missing you.” He laughed. “It was pathetic, really.” 

The bottle between Alex’s fingers turned round and round as he fidgeted. “After the first tour?”

“Yeah-”

“You never texted or called or-”

“No, because it was pathetic,” Miles laughed again. “I just waited it out.” 

“Until you didn’t think about me anymore?”

“That was the goal. I did pretty well, I think. You never really went away, but I was able to work on my life again.” He finally looked up and met Alex’s eyes. The lift on the corner was gone, and Alex could feel his uneasiness. It was the bassline of the conversation: subtle yet still rattling his rib cage. “And then we got in contact to work on this album,” he continued, “and I didn’t just want to kiss you anymore. I wanted to touch you, somehow, at all times. I got by with elbowing you and swinging an arm over your shoulder, but…” 

Alex thought back, and found rather quickly what he was searching for. Perhaps he had stored the moments in a file in his mind, at the ready for this very confession. He wouldn’t be surprised at his subconscious for doing that. He remembered Miles lighting his cigarette for him on one occasion, giving him a back rub on another, reaching over to get his hair out of his face, fixing a button on his shirt, tickling his neck during recording. 

“I just wanted to hold you,” Miles said softly. “Constantly.” 

“You hid it really well. I had no idea this was going on.” 

“I was terrified. I thought it was mutual, but I couldn’t risk being wrong about it.” 

Alex let a smile form on his lips. “You weren’t wrong.” 

Miles’s eyes lifted from his lap and met Alex’s. “You don’t have to say that.” 

Alex’s smile faltered. “What?”

“You don’t need to try and make this less uncomfortable, Al. If you want to play pretend, then we can pretend that this didn’t happen. But pretending you felt the same isn’t going to do anything but make this more complicated.”

“I’m not pretending.” 

Miles scoffed. “Alex, since that night, you’ve been stiff as a board around me. And that’s ridiculous since we’re in  _ your  _ home. You avoid me as much as you can without physically leaving the apartment. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

Alex stood from the couch. 

“Alex-”

“Look,” he said gently as he bent down to retrieve the poem that had started the conversation. He flipped right to it. “I wrote this after Understatement, Miles.” 

He handed over the papers as he began to bite his lip. Miles’s brow furrowed as he scanned the page. “I’ve been avoiding you because I don’t know what happens now. It wasn’t quite what I had been imagining for the past few years. I thought it would be more sober. Maybe there would have been more communication involved beforehand. And I certainly didn’t think a pandemic was going to lend a helping hand to our predicament.” 

Miles looked up, mouth slightly agape. “This is about us?”

“Yes.” Alex shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been waiting for this, too.” 

The notebook fell to the ground as Miles stood. In two swift steps, he stood chest-to-chest with Alex, reaching up to hold his head against his. “Then let’s try this again, yeah?” 

A breathy laugh escaped Alex’s lips before they were sealed off against Miles’s.


End file.
